Monday, May 20, 2013

Our Indifference about "Pension Reform" or Breaking our Contract

We define indifference as a lack of interest, an
unimportance or insensibility. As the Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel
states: “[It] is more dangerous than anger and hatred.” We might add that
indifference courts a complicit relationship with political and social
injustices and that, conversely, these injustices owe their success and power
to indifference.

We know the cousins of indifference are weakness and fear; we know if we choose
to be indifferent, we also relinquish our constitutional rights and
benefits. So how do we asphyxiate our apathy and abnegation? How do we
disable them? Is one possible answer to such questions our need to
become responsible for not only our future but for the future of others?

Political and social indifference is an overwhelming enigma. Nevertheless, each
one of us can make a difference. The road to caring about our future begins
with our comprehension of any legislative injustice that will affect retired
and current teachers and other public employees in Illinois. It begins with our
compassion and empathy for those citizens who will suffer the consequences of
an unconstitutional prejudicial theft.

Our most effective responses to this possibility remain our concerted
actions to protect and secure our constitutional rights and benefits; to
educate our colleagues, friends and neighbors about this attempted assault on
our contracts; and to fight against and then un-elect the liars and thieves in the
Illinois General Assembly who support "pension reform" -- those politicians that refuse to address
the state's revenue and pension debt problems.

"Indifference is never creative... Indifference elicits no response.
Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end.
And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits
the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she
feels forgotten" (Wiesel, The Perils of Indifference).

Both bills, SB 1 and SB 2404, diminish and impair Article
XIII, Section 5 of the Illinois Constitution. Both bills deny our rights under Article
I, Section 16 of the Illinois Constitution (Ex Post Facto Laws and Impairing
Contracts). Both bills also violate the U.S. Constitution under Article I,
Section 10 (Limitations on Powers of States or impairing obligations of
contracts/Ex Post Facto Laws). Whereas SB 1 is a blatant disregard for your
rights and benefits, SB 2404 is also a foolish agreement between the We Are One Coalitionand the liars and thieves
among the Illinois General Assembly.

Teacher/Poet/Musician

Copyrights & Fair Use: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of issues vital to a democracy. I believe this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law.

Persona

A writer must “know and have an ever-present consciousness that this world is a world of fools and rogues… tormented with envy, consumed with vanity; selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions… He should free himself of all doctrines, theories, etiquettes, politics…” —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). “The nobility of the writer's occupation lies in resisting oppression, thus in accepting isolation” —Albert Camus (1913-1960). “What are you gonna do” —Bertha Brown (1895-1987).